Christmas Trees in GTMO

I made the mistake of not pouncing on a tree at the Navy Exchange when they began putting up their Christmas section in, uh, October.  I hadn't thought about just how high in demand they'd be on a tiny island with a single store, so I was fairly dismayed when November turned into December and they still didn't have anything that wasn't several feet tall and pushing two or three hundred dollars.

It was with some luck that I stumbled onto a single four foot tree on Friday.  Sitting alone on the shelf and sporting a rather high forty-dollar price tag, I snapped it up.  I must have gotten lucky, since it appears to have been a display model, so I'm assuming it probably hadn't been on the shelf long.  Thanks to a little cash advance from a friend, I was good to go.

Although "pre-lit" takes away some of the fun (my fun, at least - I may have been the only one in our house who actually enjoyed putting on the lights), it's a perfect little fit for my room.  All that was left was to grab some ornaments...

...which apparently are now in short supply, rather than the trees themselves.  Having gotten paid today, I excitedly headed to the store, only to find they had four packages - yes, a mere four - of the generic bulb ornaments.  It would have been fine if they were multi-coloured, but the only two they had were, as far as I could tell, "Rust Brown" and "Shiny Rust Brown."  I nabbed a single box of "Rust Brown" - excuse me, "Mustang Velvet" - just to have something, with the hopes that they'll throw some more on the shelves in the next eleven days.

Thankfully, the good folks at home had supplied me with a handful of unique ornaments, including a nice, big black English "D," the traditional symbol for Detroit (not for "Dallas" or "Denver" as certain elements would try to assert).  And, of course, the numerous, carefully wrapped gifts rest under the branches, making the tree look all that much more appealing.

Now that I think about it, the tree is looking pretty fantastic.